Offices Hours: By
appointment. If the classroom is not occupied before we meet, I will try to
come about a half hour early.

Course Pre-requisites,
Co-requisites, and/or Other Restrictions: None, but you should have largely
completed the POEC/PPPE core.

Course Description

This course is intended to convey a broad sense of the
issues and theories that have been considered important in thinking about
development for the last century, and that are likely to continue to be
so.The emphasis in the literature is on
the "third world," but the basic problems are really universal.The course is also intended to help you
choose what further courses to take and what kind of problem you might choose for
a dissertation in this general topic area.Accordingly, the syllabus will be flexible.We can adjust it to respond to your interests
as they develop in the discussions.

There is no one theory of development.There are several theories of economic development
in economics, but development involves much more than the kinds of phenomena
that economics deals with.Ideas and
methods from anthropology, sociology, and political science are at least as
important on the social science side.Moreover, as a matter of cold fact the most important development
projects have been, and still are, framed mainly with ideas from engineering
and the physical sciences.In many
important areas of activity, it has been a struggle to get any sort of social
science expertise involved at all.To
the extent that this struggle has been successful, the key idea now is that
projects should be “interdisciplinary.”

The readings are of four main types.Some represent broad social/development
approaches that have been important in recent history: fascism, communism, and
market economics.Some represent
economic theories, mainly in development economics.Most represent practical development
projects. And some represent broad issues in development theory, like the
importance of welfare and how to measure it.

Theories of
development necessarily include some idea ofwhat government should be in order to promote it. These are of two broad types: dirigiste and
democratic.Fascism and Communism are dirigiste, meaning directive or
authoritarian.Both assume that
efficiency lies in state-level decision making for state purposes. Both
are also logically and historically associated with an ideological rather than
an experimental conception of science. This has not worked well, although
it still has its proponents.

The view of
government in Marshall Plan and the Cernea readings is democratic.Sotheir focus is on responding to needs, assuring effective markets, and
establishing constructive incentives.They also involve a more experiential or experimental conception of
science.

The Marshallplan is generally recognized as the
largest and most successful development program in history and has represented
the major practical alternative to Soviet-styled central planning over the last
60 years.In addition, however, it represents a very
different idea of what theory is than
either of the development economics perspectives.Essentially, it is pragmatic rather than
ideological and grows out of law, history, and politics as observed process
more than economics as a theoretical structure.

The readings from Cernea’s volume are all by social
scientists, mostly anthropologists, who have worked in development
projects over the last twenty-odd years.They reflect those projects.They
also reflect the same kind of experience-based view of theory as the Marshall
plan, but the projects they have worked on have for the most part been designed
by physical scientists and engineers, not social scientists.

The grouping topics is mainly issue-oriented but
somewhat chronological.For an overview,
we begin with the contrast between an early argument for central planning and
recent arguments for neo-liberalism.Neo-liberalism is a new word for an old idea: Laissez-faire. Then
we turn to the Marshall Plan and go through it very carefully to see what was
done and what kind of theory was involved. Then we come to development
economics in the post-Marshall Plan period and discuss several overlapping
topics including industrialization, unemployment, savings and investment, and
the balance between rural and urban priorities.Then we take up the very large problem of food production, which neither
the dirigiste theories nor neo-liberals had much to say about, and the
green revolution.Finally, we discuss
the orientation styled as "putting people first" in the Cernea
readings. This is the state of the art in actual development work.

The main contemporary hold-out for a kind of dirigiste
planning is China, represented by the article by Cao.

Recordings.I will try
to make recordings of the class discussions. I will post them in a
Dropbox folder. I will send you all a link to the folder once we get
started. I will probably post them with no extension.If they have an extension, your computer
would probably try to play them rather than download them. The format is mp3 or
wma (Windows Media Audio), which should also be useable on Macs. They will
probably play as they are with Windows Media Player or Winamp, but if you have
trouble you can replace the file extension.Use mp3 or wma (doesn't seem to matter which). They are pretty large
files, about 10 megabytes.You should be
able to find software to allow you to compress them if you need to, with
loss of quality. Audacity is available on the web free of charge.

Class Format. The course will use a seminar
format, with two to four student presentations a day. The numbered items in the
schedule are the topics.A presentation
is an analysis of one or more readings, as though you needed to use the idea in
it to solve a real problem. Each presentation will either be directly on
the assigned reading or on a topic that the reading discusses but does not
explain as well as it should. The student will present his/or her criticism
formally and then lead the class discussion.

Your presentation ought to be accompanied by a one or
two-page handout. It should not be a simple outline or resume of the chapter or
article, but a guide to your own argument. Make copies for everyone. We
can put them in the dropbox for classmates to download. The presentation
should include: 1. The main theoretical idea or ideas that underlie the
reading. (This can be something very simple—and usually more than a little
doubtful). 2. The main arguments for it.3. A critical assessment of those arguments.Remember that most development theories don’t
work.Many have been disastrous.

Attendance
and Participation: I
do not grade attendance and participation; this is a university.But both are important.Both are essential for serious learning, and
irregular attendance and lack of participation actually is disruptive for the
whole class, not just the person who misses.

Grading:The grade will be based on a
midterm final anda research paper.we may remove the final if the class is
small enough so that each of you can do four or more presentations.If we have the midterm, final, and research
paper the scoring will be 25%, 25%, and 50%.If we have the midterm and the paper only, the weights will be 40% and
60%.I don't want to grade the
presentations, but I will evaluate them qualitatively (good, very good, and so
on) and will take note of them if the grades on the exams and papers are bor
Iderline.

Paper.The paper
should be at least 15 double spaced pages in length.Reflecting the discussions in the course, it
should critically review a major theoretical idea relevant to development or
major issue in development.This is a
good way to examine a possible dissertation topic.The discussion in the paper must reflect
class discussions and the bibliography must be presented fully in a standard
form.All paraphrased ideas must be
properly attributed to their authors.All quoted materials must be indicated in quotes and full and complete
page references must be provided.Failure to give proper credit will result in a failing grade on the
paper and, if done with apparent intent to defraud, will be treated as plagiarism.
If you are not sure of the proper procedures in citation, check with me or a
standard source such as K. Tarrabian's Manual
of Style for Theses, Dissertations and Research Papers. If you don't own a
copy, get one.If there is something you
are not sure about and can’t find a reference for, please ask me. There is
absolutely nothing wrong with asking me. You are not expected to know
everything that might be regarded as proper professional practice when you
start out.But you are expected to try
to learn it.

Here
is a list of good papers that students have submitted in the past: Failure of
State in Eastern Europe; Protectionism and Interest Groups in the Mexican Steel
Industry: a Barrier for Development; Poverty, Aid, Welfare; The
Effectiveness of EU Structural Funds; An Incremental Strategy for Legal
Development (this was written by a student who had a law degree);
Implementation of Local Economic Development Programs in Developing Countries:
The Case of Bulgaria; The Decline in the Sense of Duty in the Cameroonian
Government Regarding Public Responsibility: the Case of Public Infrastructural
Maintenance; The Increasing Importance of Human Capital as a Policy Variable;
Bridging Disarmament and Development: Strategies Relating to the Anti-Personnel
Mine Ban Treaty; and The State and Development in Africa. It is also usually a
good idea to check out what your faculty has written; they usually think it is
legitimate.

Discuss your sources.This very important and students usually don't pay enough attention to
it.When you quote somebody or
paraphrase them, describe them well enough to say why you do so. If you believe
them, why?If not, why? For example,
what is the person’s discipline?Do they
represent an ideological position?Are
they a scholar or a spokesman for a government?Is the paper or article in a scholarly journal or a government
document?What data or experience is the
statement based on?Is it likely to be
timely or out of date?Is the person saying or a crackpot?And so on. As you read, notice the way the
authors you are reading do this.Students often worry that they wont have enough to say on a topic to
fill the page assignment.Sometimes the
topic is indeed too light or too vague, but if you check with me and I say it
will probably work the main reason for seeming to run out things to say will
most likely be that you don’t fully explain the works and data that you cite.

I will be happy to look over drafts before the paper is
due and comment.I will not say what
your grade would be.

For
accreditation, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools requires all
courses at UTD to state specific “Student Learning Objectives/Outcomes.” For
this course, the objectives are:

Objective 1.
To provide an overview of key issues in current development theory.

Objective
2.To provide an overview of key
problems in current development practice.

Objective
3.To examine the relationships between
the theoretical issues and the practical issues with a view toward identifying
areas for possible research.

This
should not be understood as precluding the more general objectives of all
graduate courses, namely to read and master the material, learn the kind of
critical thinking that it requires, and to understand how one can conduct
research on these topics.

For your
paper, here is a
bibliography of important works of many kinds relevant to what we
are covering.It includes most of what
seem to me to be the best works on the New Deal, the Marshall Plan, and the
relation between them. The sleeper in the group that you may not notice
is the biography of General Lucius Clay. Clay was an Army engineer,
an important administrator in the New Deal and the wartime mobilization,
and finally military governor of Germany during the U S occupation, appointed
by Marshall.

Assignments
& Academic Calendar The readings apart from the books by
Cernea and Dulles are on the web. Where the list says JSTOR, they can be found
in the library (web) on the JSTOR data base. You should be able to get
them by entering what I have written in the JSTOR search. Otherwise,
I have put in links. If you can't find a reading email me promptly, any time. I
will fix the reference or the link as soon as I can. You are probably not
the only person with the problem.

Schedule of Assignments

Date

Topic

Readings

23 Aug

Introduction:

Nigerian un-development—what we should understand and avoid (slides and
discussion). The powerpoint shown in class is also in the dropbox. It
is Nigeria Development.ptt.

The New Deal introduced a new concept of economic regulation: industry
self-regulation, with government oversight and participation to assure
transparency. This is what we now see in the SEC for stocks, FDIC for
savings accounts, and all manner of state and national commissions such as
the state insurance commissions, dairy commissions, railroad commissions,
public utility commissions, and so on--running to thousands of separate
bodies. This type of regulation in turn became part of the
implementation of the Marshall Plan, and thereby has now also become part of
the institutional structure of the EU.

4. World Bank Website. Look at the whole site, but especially go to About
Us>History>Archive>Presidents. Look at the biographies of the
presidents. How much would you expect such people to k now about development
needs in non-western countries?

11 Oct

Specialization and Forced Savings.

1. Ashraf Ghani on rebuilding broken states. A
presentation to the U S Department of State in 2005. Relevant to the same
problems in present system of providing aid as the WB film is.He is now President of Afghanistan.http://www.ted.com/talks/ashraf_ghani_on_rebuilding_broken_states.htm

2. Class discussion of physical farm budget (Leaf)

18 Oct

Supposed limits on
planning

Although the New Deal and the Marshall Plan introduced a vision of
economic growth closely intertwined with broad political participation, the
World Bank, which began in part as institution to facilitate Marshall Plan
financial transactions, has reverted to methods of working more akin to
authoritarian central planning. This film is on the Bank and its effects. We
will come back to the Marshall plan and the decentralized alternative next
week.

A
very good Al Jazeera documentary on a cotton growing village in Turkey that is
losing its population: http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/aljazeeraworld/

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Grading Policy

The grade will be based 20% on the class presentations,
30% on the midterm, and 50% on a final paper. The midterm will be
take-home, essay format, and call for critical evaluation of important
theoretical ideas from the readings and discussion.

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Course & Instructor Policies

I do not
allow “extra credit” or make up work. It is too difficult to assure fairness. You
are expected to complete all assignments on time. Anything not handed in on
time is failed unless you have made an arrangement with me in advance.

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No Field Trips

Standard
UTD policies are procedures for all classes are on the U T Dallas website at:
http://coursebook.utdallas.edu/syllabus-policies/.